SATA IDE SATA I SATA II..jeeez

[rossglen]

Hi people,

Still collecting components for my first build. Been told to find a 200-300 gb Western or Seagate 7200rpm 16mb cache with SATA... That's where I run into trouble. I've got an ASUS P5LD2 mobo that has both IDE and SATA connections. There is no mention of SATA I or II. So...my question is, can I install a SATA I or II or should I stay with just SATA? You can tell just how savvy I am to all this computerese by this kind of question.
Obviously, I sure could use some advise.
Thanks in advance.

Ross

 

[Codesmith]

There is no SATA I or SATA II, its all just plain old SATA. Not mentioning imaginary tech standards is a good thing.

People sometimes confuse 3.0 Gbps with the non-existant SATA II label, but they are wrong.


Some drives have NCQ some don't. Doesn't matter, for non-servers its best to keep NCQ off.

Some drives have 1.5 Gbps, others 3.0 Gbps tranfer rates, again doesn't matter because drives can't even reach the ATA 100 interface's limit. It doesn't hurt to be 3.0 Gbps, nor does it help.

I recommend any SATA drive with a 5 year warranty. Which means any Seagate (best value for your money), WD Raid Edition (seems to work best with RAID controllers), or WD Raptor (very high price per GB, best performance).

Most people prefer to avoid RAID and Raptors and spend their money elsewhere. So usually a Seagate is the right choice.

If you are building a silent PC you may want to consider Samasung drives even though the only back their hardware for 3 years.

Obviously you want SATA as new motherboard typically have 4-6 SATA ports and only one PATA IDE port.

I hear there are problems with many of the SATA optical drives so you might want to stick with a PATA for optical drives.

 

[rossglen]

Thanks, Codes! Truly appreciate your help in de-coding all the nomenclature. It's like untying Gordian's Knot!
So, not to worry about all the SATAs'..is what you're saying. A standard SATA will do the job. I'm just going to run one HDD to begin with, probably the Seagate 250...seems to be very popular. Is Samsung noticeably quieter or just by degree? Is is as reliable as Seagate?
Appreciate your feedback!

Ross